Announcing our newest portfolio: Pandemic relief and economic recovery
 The COVID-19 pandemic caused both a public health and an economic crisis. The federal government responded with historic investments including the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act of 2020 and the American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act of 2021. What lessons about designing effective programs and strategies, especially for vulnerable populations, can we draw from these investments?
In our Pandemic relief and economic recovery portfolio, you’ll find dozens of evaluations focused on programs supported by landmark COVID relief legislation. These evaluations seek to bolster our understanding of answers to crucial policy implementation questions, such as which outreach strategies work to increase people’s awareness of programs they’re eligible for and which strategies to streamline applications and intake effectively help more people access benefits. Explore the new web page and all our learnings on how to design effective programs and strategies, especially for vulnerable populations, in crisis and beyond.
Reducing administrative burden in pandemic relief and economic recovery programs
Administrative burdens include the time, psychological, and other costs that can be incurred when interacting with the government. To maximize the impact of ARP investments, programs pursued innovative strategies to reduce burden for those eligible, including conducting new outreach and streamlining applications and intake processes.
Read our new evidence brief on reducing administrative burden in pandemic relief and economic recovery programs to learn more about how the following strategies worked to reduce burden:
- Reducing learning costs
- Reducing compliance costs
- Combining the reduction of learning, compliance, and/or psychological costs
Use of proxies for eligibility verification
Recent evaluations we’ve conducted provide a strong evidence base for the use of proxies to streamline access to federal programs and reduce administrative burden on applicants and application processors. We partnered with the U.S. Department of the Treasury to evaluate the impact of streamlining income verification on access to Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA). Through these impact evaluations, we found that using an income proxy (in this case median household income in an applicant’s ZIP-code) to verify eligibility reduced application processing times and increased approval rates for families facing housing instability.
This work, highlighted in OIRA’s 2024 Burden Reduction Report, is an example of how we’re working across the federal government to help agencies reduce administrative burden. Learn more about how the use of proxies to verify eligibility for programs can help make it easier, quicker, and more likely for people to access assistance in our new evidence brief.
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